On Lundi 20 Janvier 2003 16:57, Greg M. Johnson wrote:
>
> Q: Is this already the policy for example with postings to
> p.t.s-f.? Q: Is this the way things should be?
> Q: Do we need to come up with some sort of common statement
> where we can say, "Use of this code is governed by the Povray
> Freeware Contributors Community Copyright Statement?"

Have you heard of Creative Commons? It is a non-profit
organization that has been created with the intent of
helping people benefit from copyright laws.

As their first project, they have created a set of
licenses that cover the most common rights authors
want to grant to their licensees, and the most common
conditions they want to impose on them. There are
four such "characteristics", resulting in eleven
licenses to choose from.

Of course, the licenses share a lot of material (all
the "characteristics" do is add or alter a couple of
paragraphs). The baseline rights and restrictions in
all licenses are described here:

http://creativecommons.org/learn/licenses/fullrights

The four characteristics are:

Attribution
        The licensor permits others to copy,
        distribute, display, and perform the work.
        In return, licensees must give the original
        author credit.

No Derivative Works
        The licensor permits others to copy,
        distribute, display and perform only unaltered
        copies of the work -- not derivative works
        based on it.

Noncommercial
        The licensor permits others to copy, distribute,
        display, and perform the work. In return,
        licensees may not use the work for commercial
        purposes -- unless they get the licensor's permission.

Share Alike
        The licensor permits others to distribute
        derivative works under a license identical to the
        one that governs the licensor's work.

The list of the eleven licenses that result from the
combination of the characteristics is here:

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/

For each of the licenses, a deed is available, which points
to the full license.

For example, the Attribution-NonCommercial Deed is here:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/1.0
and the license is here:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/1.0-legalcode

They of course have a home page for the licenses, with a form
to help you choose your license, but I feel it doesn't give an
overview of the whole project, that's why I preferred to give
you my view of the project. You can enter the project via its
official home page at:
http://creativecommons.org/license/

It appears the organization also has some kind of "Let's kill
the middleman" stance that I don't quite like, but eh, the
licenses are still fine with me. You can learn more about the
whole thing at:

http://creativecommons.org/faq
http://creativecommons.org/learn

and of course:
http://creativecommons.org/

Hope this helps.

-- 
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You have my name and my hostname: you can mail me

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